


Good boy!

by faeleverte



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M, contrary to the title, cute dorky flirting, fluff for days, it's not puppy play, special guest appearance of someone we all love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25369561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte
Summary: Back in a time when going to a restaurant didn't feel so risky, Clint heads out for a late lunch. The man he meets in the lobby is attractive and funny and probably has a job that means Clint's won't freak him out too badly.The man's second tier flirtations are a little worrying, though.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 39
Kudos: 148





	Good boy!

Clint couldn't help his body moving to the music playing in his ears as he waited for the hostess to come back to the front desk of the little restaurant. She’d warned him it might take a minute– something about the register system going down while the Avengers did battle over the city (they’d tried to miss the powerlines, but the semi-sentient electric sky eels hadn’t been so careful) so he’d just given her a thumbs-up and turned his tunes back up. The next tune started with full-throated singing of Lady Gaga, light chords echoing behind her, and Clint gave a little sway, fingers of his right hand tracing up a scrape on the inside of his left forearm.

_Rah rah ah ah ahhh_

His shoulders and hips shifted easily to the heavier beat, and he closed his eyes and lifted his arms over his head, stomping his feet. The chorus hit, and he tilted his head back, entire body swaying in time to the music as he mouthed the words along with Lady Gaga. At the next verse, he dropped his arms in front of him, folding his hands in front of his chest, hips taking over most of the movement. 

And, okay, so sometimes he got a little carried away when he was dancing, but he couldn't help it. 

It was hypnotic, the way it felt like he wasn't moving his body anymore so much as having his body moved for him, his joints and tendons, muscles and skin all becoming instruments played by the hands of musicians he couldn’t see. 

" _I don't wanna be friends_ " he sang silently, with a tight turn on his heels. 

And then he bumped into someone, full chest against them.

"Fuck!" Clint's eyelids flew up, and he moved his elbows out to catch his balance. The man he'd run into looked at him in surprise, his mouth stern, but his eyes amused. He carefully caught Clint’s elbow, releasing him as soon as he was certain Clint wasn’t about to fall. The mere second of contact, coming on the heels of Clint’s minor mesmerism, lit up his nerves from fingertips to shoulder. 

"Fuck! I'm so sorry!” Clint gave his hand a shake, wondering for a moment if the tingle to his skin was a leftover from getting shocked by that final eel. He dug in his back pocket with the other, trying to pull his phone free so he could turn down the music and maybe pretend to be a normal human being that hadn’t just been caught going full Gaga in a tiny diner. Unfortunately, the phone was in his _other_ back pocket, so he reached further across with his left, forcing him to curve his body at a weird angle.

He would later berate himself for not letting go of his neck and grabbing the phone with his right, but he figured he could blame it on the late night semi-Avengering with Wade and the morning and early afternoon actually Avengering with...everybody else. For being such a constant companion, exhaustion did _not_ treat him well.

Reaching all the way across his own ass twisted his spine, making him stick out his chest a little too far.

And then he chest-bumped the man again, rumpling his tie. Clint cursed and flinched away, fumbling his phone in the process, dropping it straight toward the ceramic tile floor.

“Fuck!”

Clint turned around and snagged his phone out of midair, nine inches above the floor, but instead of being able to mentally high-five himself for the good save, he managed to press his ass right into the ’s crotch. He whirled back around, backing up fast.

"Oh fuck! Sorry! Sorry! I should stop saying fuck. Sorry!" He backed away, trying to get his screen turned on so he could make the music stop. JARVIS's little carry-along program finally took pity on him, turning off the music and turning up the ambient volume on Clint's hearing aids. “FUCK! Sorry. Shit. JARVIS, thanks. Shit. Sorry.”

The amusement in the man’s eyes crept out to curl his lips and squinch the creases around his eyes in a most attractive way. Of course the man that Clint managed to nearly flatten and then sexually harass was hot. Why wouldn’t Clint embarrass himself in front of someone he might otherwise want to flirt with?

"I'm sorry," Clint said again, feeling more than a little embarrassed. 

The man huffed a laugh, using his elbows to push himself away from the wall where Clint had apparently pinned him with his Lady Gaga inspired interpretive dance. Clint considered telling the man his name was Danny, but he figured that was too low, even for this humiliation. Instead he squared his shoulders and tried to look less crazy.

"I am sorry." He gestured to himself, hoping it conveyed that he wasn’t prone to treating comfortable greasy spoons like dance clubs, swearing in people’s faces, or rubbing all over strangers. "For...for all that. For me."

"It's okay." The man's lips twitched, and the sparkle of humor in his eyes grew more pronounced. "Bad Romance, right? Gaga just...takes over sometimes. It would be sacrilege to _not_ dance."

"Exactly," Clint answered, nodding a little too vigorously. "But wait..." He gulped. "Was I...singing out loud? Because generally nobody wants that and if I did, I am so–"

"No!" The man reached out and patted Clint's bicep comfortingly. Unlike when most strangers touched him, Clint felt comforted. He wondered if the man was really just that nice, or if he was some new super whose power was being trustworthy and kind. Like Steve but less self-righteous.

“You were just mouthing the words. Um." The man's cheeks turned pink. "Enthusiastically."

"Oh." Clint wondered if his own face looked as red as if felt.

"Are you here for lunch?" The man's face stayed turned directly toward Clint's, but his eyelashes swooped down over his eyes as he did a quick skim down Clint's body and then back up. His expression shifted, so subtly that Clint was pretty sure only a spy would catch it. Clint preened, just a little, standing a little taller and squaring his shoulders. 

Hey, the “nice bod” look hadn’t been accompanied by “but not as good as Cap” disappointment, and that made getting checked out pretty fun. It was possible that this was a man who’d never seen Hawkeye up close or without his glasses, and so he didn’t know he was talking to a bonafide superhero. It was also possible that he _did_ know who Hawkeye was, and was impressed that he was all human with no enhancements. Either way, there was no hero worship (no pun intended) in the look, and that settled some of Clint’s embarrassment.

“Yeah,” Clint said, deciding that Lucky could wait a little longer for him to get home; Kate was supposed to swing past and feed him, anyway. “Yeah. Busy morning, so it’s a late lunch.”

"Same here." One corner of the man's lips tucked up a little, and his whole face lit with the friendliness of the almost-smile. Clint couldn’t decide if it was the man’s lovely eyes, his sharp jaw, or the spread of his shoulders underneath his suit that were the nicest part to look at. The man noticed Clint noticing him and winked. "Not so mad that my morning work ran so late."

"Yeah," Clint agreed, running a hand over his head and hoping his hair wasn’t sticking up and making him look stupid. Suit man didn’t have a hair out of place, and Clint figured he must be a desk-type worker, someone who didn’t have to contend with the hair-rumpling effects of riding Iron Man out the back of a jet to get to a fight. Clint realized he was staring again and searched his brain for something to say. He almost smacked himself in the face when all that came out was “So what do you do?”

"Mid-level bureaucrat." The man's smile shifted a bit, becoming a tiny bit tighter. “Just a...an upper-level cock-up I had to sort out. Something...came through unusual channels, and then I was stuck doing cleanup and cat herding.”

Clint snorted. “Yeah, the same could about be said for my morning.”

“I have a confession,” the man said, flushing red from receding hairline to collar in an instant. “I...I _do_ know who you are. I’m really trying to play cool, but I saw that shot where you took down three eels in a go and then turned around and put one through the eye of a fourth, and I’m having such a hard time not...not...not squeeing at you.”

“Squeeing?” Clint gave a slightly incredulous laugh. First off, _no one_ noticed the things he did with the bow, especially not the followup shots. Secondly, the man had held it together long enough that maybe he really did want to eat Clint with a spoon just because of his fine ass and not because of his stupid job.

“Yeah,” the man said, and then he raised both hands, palms forward, beside his face. “You know.” His tone pitched higher and he shook his hands like a particularly giddy five year old. “ _Squee_!”

He blushed harder, and Clint burst out laughing.

“Anyway,” the man huffed a small laugh, clearly at himself. “Anyway, your job looks more exciting than mine.”

"Hey," Clint said, holding up his hands in denial. "Most of my job is boring. I _hope_ it's boring. Then nobody's, like, dying. But your job, don’t you like, help people? I mean, I have a lot of friends–" and coworkers– ”who work for the government, and they all take it really seriously. Like...Duties to the taxpayers and stuff.”

Clint hoped he could shut himself up there. 

He couldn’t.

"Government work is really important, right?" Clint flapped both hands in front of him, wondering where he was going with any of it. "Like do you do–" 

He paused for breath, and the man came to his rescue, smile returning to its previous warmth. 

"I make sure people have essential services," the man said. "Try to keep them...protected against unforseeables."

"Like Homeland Security?" Clint asked, suddenly feeling a niggling of suspicion. Hadn’t he read that somewhere? Was it the SHIELD handbook or in the tripe that others had stolen from the CIA or the Secret Service for SHIELD operatives to laugh at?

"Fuck no!" The man's gently sloping shoulders squared up, and Clint realized he had a pretty nice physique inside his plain navy suit. "And don't ask if it's the CIA, because I wouldn't be caught dead playing in _their_ sandbox either!"

Clint laughed, his suspicions firming up. He was about to just go for it, ask if the man was SHIELD, but a soft, _excuse me_ distracted him. The hostess had reappeared, holding two menus and looking at them in confusion. 

"Two today?" she asked.

"Oh.” Clint flapped a hand back and forth between himself and the hot man in the suit. "We're not...we just...Two tables. Yeah. Go...go ahead."

The man requested the patio, and Clint watched him walk away, kinda wanting to kick himself. If he’d been able to think, he’d have asked the man if they could share a table, carried on the conversation. When the hostess returned, he, too, requested the patio, and was really relieved when he found himself at the last remaining table, right next to the man in the blue suit. The downside was that suit-guy was facing _away_ from Clint’s table. Upside, that meant Clint could ogle the spread of his shoulders. 

Unfortunately, even Clint could only look at the back of someone’s head for so long. He turned away with a little sigh of regret and stared across the rest of the patio. The other tables held mostly dessert-and-drinks folks, those that had eaten and those that had stopped in on their shopping expeditions. One pair of women toward the front were clearly related, their sharp-beaked profiles and intense dark eyes almost mirror images. One of them had streaks of silver in her shockingly blue-black hair, but the other woman had a hint of red when she tossed her head and the sun glittered over her hair. Both of them had ageless, unlined faces and Clint couldn’t decide if they were mother and daughter or if they were sisters and one had dyed her hair.

“You _are_ a handsome fella,” the man in the suit crooned unexpectedly. And Clint felt his spine stiffen. The man hadn’t come across quite so...creepy in the foyer; cooing seemed generally out of character, from what Clint had seen before. 

“C’mere,” the man said in that same obnoxious voice some people adopted with children or animals (Clint was proud to say that he’d _never_ spoken to a child that way, too clearly remembering his own childhood and all the false comfort offered by people that used that voice). 

(Clint deliberately didn’t think about how he talked to his own dog, poor Lucky waiting at home. Clint would get him a doggy bag and pad his apology with pets and tasty treats).

“Yeah, come here, gorgeous.”

Clint tapped his hearing aid, wondering if maybe it had malfunctioned. Or if he’d fallen asleep waiting for food and was having a helluva weird dream.

“Lemme get you a drink.”

Dude couldn’t be talking to Clint, right? They’d flirted a little, sure, but, as come ons went, that one wouldn’t get anyone to come...on. Clint gave himself a little shake. No time for innuendo. Or out the end-o, either. Poor man was having some kind of mental break or something. That further strengthened Clint’s suspicion that the man must be SHIELD. Many, _many_ things that happened to and around the personnel there could drive someone over the edge. Clint, being ostensibly still on their books, should know.

“Heyyyyyy,” said the man. “Come here. I won’t hurt you.”

Clint counted the objects on the table that could be used to incapacitate without causing lasting damage. Four. Five, if he dumped the sugar out of the ceramic box. If the man _was_ SHIELD, he’d be fairly hard to take down. If he was a pencil pusher, Clint might have a speed advantage on him; although the man would have to spend a _lot_ of hours in the gym to be built like he was if he spent his days behind a desk. Hell, _Clint_ had to spend a few hours in the gym every single day, and his job had him climbing buildings (and falling off of them) on the regular while he was out Avenging. 

“Yeah, you want me to get you that drink, don’t you,” the man said, still in that drippy, adoring tone of voice, and Clint couldn’t just sit and listen anymore. Something weird was going on, and Clint was supposed to be a superhero. Either the man was about to fall off his rocker, or he was an LMD– Life Model Decoy– having a terrible software glitch. Some of Clint’s favorite people were semi or mostly robotic, so he had to help. 

Clint carefully eased his chair back, trying to keep it from scraping on the stained cement floor of the patio. He took a deep breath and jumped to his feet, whirling at the same time, hands up and ready for anything.

Except the man was not paying the slightest attention to Clint. He was leaning down, halfway off his chair, jacket riding up to show just how well-formed his lower back and rear really were (very, very well-formed indeed). The man shifted, reaching deep into the shadows between the table and the shrub that formed the border of the patio.

“If you want me to get you some water, you’re gonna have to come out here to me.” Clint thought, if _he_ was a dog, he’d trust anyone who spoke like that.. “And just who are you?”

And then the space under the table gave a sad little whine. 

Clint pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew that whine. And he knew the scruffy, one-eyed, yellow face that poked out from the shadow, offering a little “Erf” of curiosity.

“Really?” Clint said, shaking his head at the dog. “When d’ja get here, Lucky?”

The man tried to right himself too quickly, bumping his head on the table. He managed to get his rear back firmly onto his chair, but he was still leaning down. His tie hung crooked, his jacket still rode up his back, and he had a red smudge just at the edge of his receding hairline where he’d thumped himself. His hair had gotten a little rumpled while he’d tried to coax out the dog, and Clint nearly swallowed his tongue. 

If the man had been hot when he was perfectly pressed, like this he was irresistible. 

“When did I get lucky?” the man said, looking up at Clint like _he_ was the one that suddenly sounded like a crazy person. Clint didn’t know what to say to that (without accidentally offering that evening and his own loft), so he ignored it. Lucky got excited when he heard his name, and quickly leaned further out from beneath the table to lick the man’s ear. When the man giggled, Clint tried desperately not to think about licking his _other_ ear to see if he’d giggle for a human. Lucky grinned at Clint, like he knew what Clint was thinking. 

Clint took a couple of steps closer and dropped to one knee, grabbing Lucky’s collar and dragging him further out from his hiding spot. Lucky panted into Clint’s face, all lolling tongue of smile and dog breath.

“I swear to God,” Clint said apologetically, looking up at the man, “he was shut up at home when I left this morning.”

“This is your dog?” The man settled himself back in his chair and leaned one elbow on the table. He set his cheek on his fist, eyes crinkled with humor, even though his mouth was still soft and relaxed. “Good tracker.” He reached out to pat Lucky’s head, and Lucky nosed his outstretched fingers in Clint’s direction. “Good wingman, too, apparently..”

“Um,” Clint scratched the back of his neck, wondering just how bad his blush had gotten. “He’s...I thought you...it’s…”

“How about you join me at this table,” the man said, smile spreading from his eyes to his lips. Clint felt a little faint; the man was _breathtaking_ when he grinned. Since Clint didn’t reply, the man kept going. “Lucky seems to have decided to join me already. I’d hate you to think he’s cheating on you with a stranger.”

“Oh.” Clint could feel his face getting hot, so he stuck out his hand for a shake to cover his awkwardness. “I’m Clint.” And then he felt like slapping himself. man had already confessed to knowing who Clint was.

“Phil,” the man–Phil answered. He too reached out to shake, and Lucky obligingly lifted a paw to set on his palm, right between his hand and Clint’s. “Nice to meet you both.”

Clint elbowed Lucky aside and carefully shook Phil’s hand. He stayed there on one knee, arm over the dog, smiling up at Phil a little too long. 

“Oh my God!” A girl squealed. The server, finally arriving to take drink orders, backed up sharply enough to bump into a nearby table. “I didn’t mean to interrupt...go ahead.” She gestured at Phil with both hands. “You’d better answer him if he couldn’t even wait for dessert to ask.”

Phil looked at her, looked down at Clint, and then laughed brightly. 

“Of _course_ I’ll marry you, Clint.” He tugged at Clint’s fingers, and Clint pushed himself off the ground, surprised to find himself being kissed quite firmly. Phil brushed the seam of Clint’s lips with a delicate flick of his tongue and then pulled back with wicked intent and laughter in his eyes. “Nothing would make me happier!”

Clint bit his lip to keep from laughing and stood up quickly. He stumbled a little as he tried to get himself into the spare chair at Phil’s table. Lucky took one look at him and leaned his cheek on Phil’s knee. Phil flicked a glance sideways, toward the rest of the afternoon customers, and widened his eyes at Clint, a clear _go ahead_. Clint grabbed Phil’s hand and called “He said yes!”

All around them, other diners burst into applause, and Clint thought he saw the flash of a phone camera or three go off. Great. Phil gave him a wry kind of smile and a wink, and they both started to laugh.

The Hawkeye surprise engagement (and to a man, no less) might make the Avengers PR people go spare, but Clint figured he could sort that out later. Who knew, maybe he could get to know Phil a little better and make the pretense real. Lucky seemed to like him, anyway. Clint reached out to pat the dog’s head with the hand not gripping tightly to Phil’s.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Best wingman ever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I AM still working on Hands Up (among a million other things), but, well, weirdness. I hope this made you smile a little. 
> 
> Okay, so I really hope it made you laugh so hard you snorted, but I'll settle for a smile. <3


End file.
